A decade and a half ago, San Juan was one of the powers in 2A softball, winning three state championships over a stretch of six years.
Since then, however, the program dipped and has only been a mild threat in state tournaments — until now.
San Juan posted a 24-2 record during the regular season this spring, earning the No. 1 seed in the 2A state tournament. In the past two days, the Broncos have backed up that seed with three straight playoff wins, including a 5-3 win over Grand in the 2A semifinals on Friday afternoon to advance to Saturday’s 2A state championship.
San Juan will face No. 4 Enterprise at 1:30 p.m. at BYU, needing just one victory to capture its first state championship since 2013.
“San Juan was a dynasty for quite a while under Craig Swanson and Monte Lee and J.J. Squire and those guys. Then they moved to 3A and had some coaching changes, and kind of in disrepair for a while and taken us a bit to get back,” said Broncos coach Mike Bowers, who’s in his fifth year as head coach.
With a berth in the 2A title game on the line, San Juan jumped out fast against Grand, scoring four runs in the first inning, and extending the lead to 5-1 after two.
Grand chipped away, cutting the lead to 5-2 in the third inning and then 5-3 in the fifth against San Juan pitcher Ella Stearns, who exited after the fifth as she finished with five strikeouts.
Khatira Keith, a state champion wrestler for the Broncos earlier this school year, came on in relief over the last two innings and held Grand scoreless, including getting a pop out for the final out of the sixth inning with two runners in scoring position.
Even though Bowers said his team made some mistakes in the win, his players’ response after those hiccups was one of the keys to the win.
“The thing we’ve been pressuring the girls to do all year long is reset. Just reset, get onto the next play. Or do your job on offense, or do your job on defense. Just something bigger than yourself. That’s what we worked on. They did that well today,” said Bowers.
Madden Perkins, Kheirra Keith and Colee Crofts all drove in runs to lead the way offensively for San Juan.
While the Broncos only needed one win to advance to Saturday’s championship day, Enterprise had to grind out three wins to get there.
The Wolves rallied past Duchesne 13-2 in the morning, then rallied past South Sevier in the afternoon 12-9 before cruising past Grand 13-2 in the evening to advance to their fifth state championship game in the past six years.